turtledovefandomcom-20200216-history
Talk:Strom Thurmond
I decided this could use a historical thumbnail bio hopefully to scare off spammers; but it's hard to do a thumbnail bio on someone whose public career lasted nearly seventy-five years. Actually there was a lot more of interest in his life than I'd realized: the bit about him being a general, for instance, was quite surprising to me. Nor did I know that he'd started out as a teacher--Do we have a category for teachers, by the way? As for that weird bit about winning the 1954 election but not accepting, getting appointed, resigning, and getting appointed again--I really do wonder what was going on there. Something doesn't sit right about all that fancy footwork. Turtle Fan 21:40, 14 November 2008 (UTC) :We have a category for educators. You seem to have discovered that. :Maybe it would be just enough to say "In 75 years, Thurmond served as jobjobjob. He is most remembered for being a racist prick." Obivously, we'd want something more sophisticated. TR 22:00, 14 November 2008 (UTC) ::He's probably more widely remembered for being older than the hills than he is for being racist at this point. ::I believe, and if memory serves much of the Evidence! based on other spam attacks bears up, that a certain level of detail is needed to satisfy those people; a mere "He was senator for a zillion years" would not suffice for any fanboys or any fire-breathing Thurmond haters just dying for a chance to flame him. Now again, when you get into such a long career "a certain level of detail" does get a bit long-winded; but at least it's not so long that I could stand in front of Congress reading it for 24 hours and 18 minutes. ::24 hours and 18 minutes--Doesn't it seem like the last eighteen minutes were just gratuitous? Turtle Fan 22:53, 14 November 2008 (UTC) :::Just a bit, yes. TR 00:10, 15 November 2008 (UTC) I took him out of Characters With One Name-that's really meant for fictional characters. For as many historicals HT was cagey about, we probably could support some sort of "Unnamed Historical Characters whose identity was obvious to nearly everyone." It would have a shorter name, of course. TR 15:27, 25 November 2008 (UTC) Storm Whitson, or Whiston--Did HT just choose the surname at random, or does it complement Thurmond in some clever way that's lost on me? I might also ask what a 90+ character was doing between marching with Victor Radcliff and making his fortune in Gernika, why he'd strike out for something new like that at such an advanced age if he likes constancy so much, and how he's been in the Senate longer than anyone can remember if he only started down the path to prominent citizenship 30 years earlier. Turtle Fan 21:29, December 17, 2009 (UTC) :Name-we'd probably have to go looking back into the linguistic history of both names to get any jokes. ::You know, if a joke's that obscure, I don't know why he bothers. On the other hand, it's not like our understanding of the scene would be any less were the name assigned with no thought to telling a joke, so I suppose there's no harm in winking to the two people who actually know what he's getting at. Turtle Fan 23:21, December 17, 2009 (UTC) :The rest of it--I'd have to review those passages before commenting. Of course "longer than anyone can remember" may mean that all the present senators got there long after Storm did. But that's all I can say about that. ::I thought he might just be the senior senator, but if HT is going to emphasize his old age and Thurmond-esque qualities, I have to think he intended to convince us he's been around a long, long time. Having him get rich in Gernika which only joined the USA a generation earlier, and having established that wealth and prominence are prerequisites for Senate seats, he kinda shot himself in the foot. Turtle Fan 23:21, December 17, 2009 (UTC) :::Tangenting slightly, that's actually a thread I wouldn't mind seeing HT follow a bit--how a society that arose very specifically from people seeking to free themselves from elitism still managed to become elitist on a few levels (family and property being the big reasons), and whether or not they ever pulled back from that elitism. TR 17:27, December 18, 2009 (UTC) ::::Hmm, good point. The dominance of Radcliffe's descendants certainly seemed out of step with the Atlantean spirit. And another thing--How are there so friggin many? Old Man Edward only had two kids; he shouldn't've become such a prolific progenitor based on that. ::::Actually I wonder how many people who say they're descended from the Radcliffe line really aren't. It bears great advantages, and HT mentioned that no one bothers tracing the geneology so closely. Turtle Fan 20:58, December 18, 2009 (UTC) :His inclusion was rather bizarre on HT's part, but ultimately his role is so narrow he doesn't really get in the way. TR 22:35, December 17, 2009 (UTC) ::Couldn't've said it better myself. Turtle Fan 23:21, December 17, 2009 (UTC) Obvious to Everyone But John Gizzi Is that Better Board Wiki Jelay started still up? If so we should provide a link. If not we should probably take the reference down. Having inside jokes in a forum meant for other people is harmless if that joke can be missed without affecting a person's understanding of the content into which it's inserted, but here it's not the case. The only alternative would be a lengthy description of the Logic of Ten Gizzis, and anyone who wasn't there for that wouldn't care and it really wouldn't belong here. (Holy shit, I sound just like Silver. Which reminds me, a third option might be to resurrect the article he deleted all those years ago.) Turtle Fan 05:31, June 29, 2010 (UTC) :To the best of my knowledge it's still up. There is a link in Category:Fascists, I believe. TR 16:33, June 29, 2010 (UTC) Fate Unknown I seem to remember his death being fairly conclusive. Turtle Fan 02:31, October 18, 2010 (UTC) I don't. He kept speaking while the US bombing raid occurred and then evacuated the building after he finished but we didn't see him die. ML4E 21:43, November 29, 2010 (UTC) :This 7 year old thread might be worth revisiting. Given more recent analogous examples, it might be best to take 1940s Deaths (Fictional Work) and related categories out of his list, and remove the ambiguous death notes from his info box. This is one of those times where it's probably best to say "we don't know."JonathanMarkoff (talk) 08:22, August 14, 2017 (UTC) ::I am inclined to agree. TR (talk) 16:49, August 14, 2017 (UTC) ::I reread the scene and my recollections from above are accurate. Anne is killed on the street heading for a bomb shelter across from the meeting hall. Not only do we not see Strom (or something) getting killed, we don't even see the meeting hall being bombed. Instead it was a crashing and exploding bomber that killed Anne. Something like the John Paul II scene in Armistice except the church IS bombed there. ML4E (talk) 18:23, August 15, 2017 (UTC) :::Yeah, having pointed out that we can't say for sure that the Pope wasn't killed, I guess we have to do the same here. Turtle Fan (talk) 00:20, August 16, 2017 (UTC)